Refuelling
by x-Kim0x
Summary: A routine stop in Cardiff to refuel the TARDIS has both joyous and slightly worrying results for the Doctor. 10/Rose reunion.
1. An Old Friend

**Refuelling. **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. **

**A/n: This was originally meant to be a one-shot, but ended up being around 13 pages on Word, so I've separated it into parts. Please review. **

"Refuelling," The Doctor told his two companions enthusiastically as he bounded around the TARDIS console. Having skipped around it several times, he jumped to a halt at the screen and tuned it to enable him and his companions a glimpse of their exterior surroundings without the need to approach the door.

Martha looked thoughtful for a moment, before grinning at Donna and speaking up. "I wonder what drama it will entail this time…"

Successful tuning of the monitor completed, the Doctor looked to Martha and feigned offence. He pouted at her, before stamping a foot down onto the grating in typical child fashion. "You'd never notice he was 900, not only by his looks!" Martha commented, giggling madly as she did so. "Miss Jones, what were you suggesting?" The Doctor finally enquired.

"Oh, come on. You've never been able to refuel without incident. I mean, we end up at the end of the universe, only to have the TARDIS stolen, and a couple of years beforehand, you initiated an earthquake!"

Donna's expression deteriorated from slight amusement to an extreme case of shock; something not dissimilar to disgust etched across her face. "He did what?!" Donna's unmistakeable tones boomed out.

Martha took several paces towards her fellow companion before abruptly, swiftly and suddenly halting her steps. "I know," she chuckled with her, clasping Donna's palm in her own and leading her to the monitor; still attended to by the Doctor.

Donna, never one to remain in a place which offered her not the slightest degree of excitement; began pulling her friend away from the console as a blue coat came into her view. "Who's that?" she commanded to be told by either of those accompanying her.

"Here comes trouble," Martha thought aloud, and pursed her lips; almost in disbelief.

Donna tapped her on the shoulder twice, and Martha responded by turning her head and glancing at her. "Who is it?" she asked again, rather patiently by her own established standards.

"That's an old friend of the Doctor's; conveniently the same friend that the Doctor and I met here."

Donna shot an appalled glare at the Doctor. "We're going to have the TARDIS stolen off of us now are we, spaceman?"

"Spaceman? Good one, Donna!" Martha said with an annoyingly harsh chuckle, as she made her way to the door. She swung it open enthusiastically, sprinting up to the approaching Captain as he jogged to the TARDIS, neatly positioned by the Doctor between two lampposts. Reaching her destination and friend, she held her arms out to him and he enveloped her in a hug, which was almost suffocating. She'd been aware that the Captain more or less fancied everything with a pulse, but she was the Doctor's friend, and so was he. Surely that was a bit too close to home? It would complicate things no end; he was immortal and most probably not a human, and she was a mortal human. To put it bluntly, he was the wrong man. Martha Jones had no problem with being the object of alien's affections, but his were undesirable. As Jack moved away from her and offered her his hand, the pair started towards the TARDIS. Martha did not reciprocate his offer of a hand; to put it plainly, she had her eyes fixated on an alien already, and there was no room for another. Her sites were firmly set on the last remaining time lord; the Doctor.

"What are you doing here?!" Martha asked the Torchwood head rather excitedly as he strolled confidently through the door of the ship, which she courteously held open for him.

Jack grinned at the medical student before him, and glanced across the TARDIS's extending width at the Doctor. "Thank you, Martha Jones," he voiced in his usual flirtatious tones, which were promptly met with a stern utterance of "Jack, drop it!" the origin of which was their designated driver.

Martha smiled sarcastically while glancing at the wall of one of the many corners of the time ship. One out of two wasn't bad, she concluded, as Captain Jack Harkness ceased flirting with her, somewhat unfortunate to attract the attention of his roving eyes; as some would regard the issue.

The Doctor busied himself through the commotion fixing a small section of the TARDIS. The sonic screwdriver illuminated several times before the time lord declared that the batch of repairs had now been completed. He spun round to face the new arrival. "So Jack, what's with you being back?" he questioned, noting that Martha's question remained unanswered as a direct result of his attempt to prevent flirting on Jack's part.

Sensing that the somewhat intense atmosphere that had fallen over the ship as their visitor entered it had now been alleviated by the Doctor's command, Martha allowed herself to jokingly join the impending exchange. "Yeah; leaving us like that; did we smell or something?"

The Doctor exploded into laughter. For a time lord that had lived for a little over nine centuries, he really was extremely childish. Upon first glance, one could not stand the most minute of chances at successfully deducing that he could defend the Earth single-handedly against terrible, abominable and truly harrowing monsters, only to be easily humoured by a commonly assumed explanation for being deserted at a moment's notice.

Jack looked peeved for a second, as he considered whether or not the pair had contracted amnesia on some alien planet. He dismissed this thought as simply being too surreal even by the standards of the slightly domesticated time lord, and spoke up again. "I told you; I had Torchwood depending on me," he informed his companions coolly.

"Don't know why you bothered to rebuild it after everything that happened there anyway," the Doctor told his old friend sorrowfully. Neither Martha nor Jack felt the need to question the Doctor's words, which had certainly drained him emotionally. He looked to be lost, deeply saddened and contemplating his thoughts aimlessly; considering Rose; for no particular reason. Silence fell around the TARDIS, which dragged the Doctor from welcome thoughts; thoughts that he was less than willing to admit. He had to live on, to continue in his typical bounding, indestructible and legendary fashion. "What's changed, then?"

"Oh, my job was stolen; I got the boot." The Captain replied in his standard tones, loud by comparison with the Doctor and many of his companions.

The Doctor sniggered slightly, allowing himself to wonder which combination of choice words the Captain would have reserved for any that stood in his way; never mind took over his role within the Torchwood organisation. "By who?" he enquired, his tone rising, detached from the thoughts which almost constantly tugged at his heart strings. He remained rather amused at his recent discovery that his immortal friend had returned jobless.

"Rose Tyler," the Captain stated simply.


	2. A Reunion

**Thanks for the lovely reviews, keep them coming x**

**I'm not sure how I reply to reviews (I'm new) so I thought I'd put it here; I have finished writing this. It's 4 parts long. **

The Doctor's jaw fell almost to the floor of the TARDIS, while Donna's mouth appeared to have been parted by an explosive of some description as she gasped in pleasant surprise

The Doctor's jaw fell almost to the floor of the TARDIS, while Donna's mouth appeared to have been parted by an explosive of some description as she gasped in pleasant surprise. Martha however seemed to be appalled; if this was true, her already pathetic chances would amount to nothing. Annihilated; that was if they weren't so at present.

"THIS IS SICK!" Donna was quick to bellow, as Martha buried her face in her hands. Having listened to the Doctor's endless mentions of Rose, she'd concluded that now wasn't the best time for him to see that the news had been devastating to her; an earthquake in a fledgling country, with what could scarcely be branded an economy. "YOU KNOW HOW GUTTED HE WAS TO LOSE HER, AND YOU COME STORMING IN HERE WITH YOUR CHARM AND ANNOUNCE SHE'S HAD YOUR JOB OFF OF YOU!"

Jack quickly protested, desperate to maintain credibility; basically banished already; and the Doctor's friendship, which he'd struggled to obtain in the first place. That was down to Rose in the end, he resolved. "I'm serious! Telling me this is sick; you're not the one who's had your job pinched by a 22 year old!"

"Ok Jack, cut it out," The Doctor spoke up meekly, not daring to believe the Captain's words to house one shard of the truth. "If she's back, then where is she? Just tell me that."

"Got a problem?!" asked a scornful Donna as Jack looked to be submerged in thought before them. "She doesn't have work today; at home maybe?" Jack believed that he had suggested this helpfully and in good faith, but something in the back of his mind told him that the Doctor would not have the patience for fractured information. He'd hoped that the Doctor would be capable of determining her whereabouts through simply being acquainted with her for so long, but it appeared not. Either Rose Tyler was in the flat, or it was curtains for his friendship with the time lord.

The Doctor slid one foot in front of the other repeatedly and moved out of the TARDIS without uttering another word; barely audible or otherwise. The door slammed to a close in his wake, only succeeding to ricochet within the mind of the Captain and to increase his terror at the prospect of there failing to be a reunion between the two time travellers.

"Jackie," started the Doctor pleasantly as the interior of number 48 came into his eye line. He struggled to keep his rush of emotions at bay, but did so; not allowing himself to emit a beaming smile. Rose could have moved on, have simply lost interest in the prospect of travelling in time once again, or have stayed on the parallel world to which he had regrettably lost her. If ever there was an appropriate use for the word, it was for them. "Is Rose around?" he asked her courteously and politely, yet boldly.

As if a trademark of Jackie Tyler, her hand quickly met with the side of the Doctor's face with an almighty force driving it.

"What was that for?!" he hissed quickly in response to the unceremonious greeting which Jackie had given to him seconds previously.

Pete made his way to the door as Jackie huffed. She slammed a foot down onto the untidily tiled floor as if far from a model child, and glared at the Doctor. Pete's face froze in an unchallenged degree of shock as the Doctor came into his eye line. He seemed to be almost unconscious for several moments, before his lips broke out into a small smile.

"Doctor, good to see you," he smiled to him. Jackie meanwhile spun on her heel, her expression implying that she had just experienced a rather unpleasant encounter with a ghost. "Pete, tell me you're joking!" she barked, looking ready to banish the Doctor from her very doorstep.

Pete scowled at his wife, having now married her in reality and not continuing to rely on the fact that a parallel existence of himself had married her as he had married the parallel Jackie. "Jacks, I'm not joking; like it or not, she loves him," Pete stated sternly, resuming eye contact with the Doctor for a brief period which could not have exceeded several seconds in duration. Gesturing for the Doctor to enter, he restrained Jackie through initiating a stern, inescapable and yet not remotely vicious grasp around her wrist. "Nice to see you again, Pete," he uttered graciously as he accepted the invitation into the flat.

"Wish I could say the same," Jackie scowled back as Pete led her away from the door and the ability to grasp the Doctor.

Pete quickly interjected his wife's scornful tones, and glanced at her with a faint distaste. "Someone wants to see you, Doctor. She hasn't stopped talking about your adventures; I guess it was her way of trying to keep alive the thought that one day she'd see you again." Pete recalled honestly, his voice laced with sincerity, nodding knowingly in a way of expressing that he'd correctly anticipated the Doctor's following question. "In her bedroom; go on through," he said, turning his head to indicate the relevant doorway.

The door creaked open ahead of the Doctor as he edged silently into the room. Rose's possessions were strewn over the floor just as they had been in the TARDIS, when she either could not be bothered or had no time to push the garments back into her rather sizeable rucksack prior to the pair embarking on their latest adventure; this attached to the shared hope of it being just one in an extremely long line. He would never tire of having her on board, and she loved the travelling and his company which came attached to it.

Soft cries spilled out from the far corner of the room, which was bathed in pink. Drowned in it. Pink walls, pink duvet, pink curtains, pink carpet; the room was brimming with it, smouldered, saturated, encompassed. Carpets, the Doctor allowed himself to consider, remembering the adventure the pair had shared as the TARDIS had taken them to a sanctuary base situated in orbit beneath a black hole. Rose's blonde hair was knotted, strands of it hanging loosely down the side of her face; it barely concealed any of her tears, and was clearly much more than dampened by them as they continued to fall freely from her beautiful eyes, cascading like rivers down her pretty face.

"Rose?" The Doctor uttered with a suffocating gentility, cautious of his teary lost companion; how she might react extremely delicately to his return; her head submerged, buried and almost welded into her pillow.

Rose's cries, which pleaded for a way in which she could be reunited with her Doctor; ceased at once. Her breath hitched within her throat as she sniffed, and this was muffled by the pillow below her. She dared not to look up, for fear that she might be dreaming, having willed the voice to repeat itself within her mind during this process. Her hopes did not have to sustain her existence, for the voice repeated its loving call of her name, which it had first issued seconds beforehand. "It's me," offered the Doctor, extending his sentence; which cried out for her to simply look at him as she had done years beforehand.

"Doctor?" she reeled in a tone which remained muffled as she attempted rather feebly to brush away at least some of the falling tears with her pillow.

"Yeah; it's me, and I'm not going anywhere," he told her reassuringly, cursing himself at the next words which fell uncontrollably from his mouth, "unless you want me to…"

He'd said it now; all he could do was hope, hope and pray.

His caring, concerned and not remotely forceful tones played on Rose's mind as it spun from the enormous scale of the words which had recently met with her ear drums. They had provided a breath of fresh air; been music to her ears and sunlight in the darkened tunnel in which she found herself crawling through life, but filled her with concern, dread and fear. He'd have gone; she should have leaped into his comforting arms, and instead she'd remained enveloped in her duvet, barely conscious as the enormity of the reunion hit her.

"Doctor, I need you," she whimpered pathetically, turning onto her side as she prepared to catch sight of nothing but a pink wall, devoid of decoration, light and the one face she longed to see.

He grinned, kneeling so that he matched the level that the bed reached from the floor. Shuffling across it, he held his arms out, and leapt forward as he saw her heading for a collision with them. "I've missed you so much," he informed her sorrowfully as he enveloped her in a tight hug and she clung to him like a small child.

Rose Tyler felt exactly as she'd often feared she'd never feel again. Truly happy, content and at peace; for the only person she needed in the universe and within all the universes out there hugged her to him tightly. He pulled her head down onto his shoulder with a shocking gentility and let his tears of happiness fall onto her blonde strands as she tightened her grip on him, seemingly afraid that he would vanish at any moment; leave her all alone, disappear. "I'm never letting you out of my sight again," he reassured her, sensing her feelings as to his reappearance. Her lips parted, but no sound was emitted. Never before had the Doctor envisaged nor witnessed a Tyler at a loss for words.

The Doctor rocked his companion backwards and forwards steadily as she eventually found some words within her throbbing mind, within which thoughts continued to circulate at a speed she had never thought possible, and with such ferociousness. "Doctor.. I can't believe it .. I've waited so long for this, thinking that it would never come," she continued to sob in joy, craning her neck and looking into the Doctor's eyes.

"Hey, that's enough of that," the time lord assured her; his best friend, his one love. His eyes widened, unbeknown to his sobbing companion; as a thought suddenly collided with him like a truck. "I never got the chance to say; Rose Tyler, I love you so much," he told her sincerely, giving way to a comforting silence to fall over the two time travellers, like snowdrops over the ground.

"I love you," Rose quickly reciprocated with something of a squeal behind her words, which she seemed to have suppressed for some time.

This was better than the Doctor could have possibly dreamed, having spent night upon night longing for a reunion with his beloved Rose. She was here, she hadn't cursed him for not arriving sooner, and she seemed to be totally dependent on him. He hated to see her emotionally down, but this way he knew that he was in no danger of having to experience the indescribable heartache that would come attached to having to be separated from her again. "Nothing can hurt us ever again," he told her in a reassuring whisper.


	3. Trouble In Paradise

**Thanks once again for the reviews, please keep them coming x**

**Enjoy!**

"Is the Doctor here?" Captain Jack Harkness asked, or rather demanded hurriedly as he strolled into the Tyler residence. Pete had opened the door, and was at a loss for who the individual that had entered his presence actually was.

Jackie looked utterly appalled; an expression of more than faint distaste clouding her features. "What do you think this is; a drop in centre for the homeless citizens of London?!"

Jack grimaced in pain, one hand clamped over his nose and his back bent over so that he stepped forward at around half of his usual height. "No, I think Rose Tyler lives here and that the Doctor's with her; I need to see him," he explained with a lack of courtesy for Jackie and Pete, whom he had not even disclosed his name to. He continued to kick his way into various rooms, with a force not sufficient to inflict any visual damage on them.

Pete threw a concerned gaze at his wife, asking without the need for words why it was that their visitor, whom he regarded to be something of a deranged individual; thought it acceptable to force his way into his home, their home. Well, he hadn't forced the door in, but he still lacked permission to enter the flat.

"Excuse me; who the hell do you think you are? This isn't the TARDIS; if you want to speak to the Doctor, I suggest you go and wait there for him!" A wholly unsympathetic Jackie growled, as Jack saw his opportunity and seized it.

"Suggestion noted, thank you. In here is it?" He asked, finishing his highly sarcastic tirade and reaching the only door that had been left unopened.

Pete wrapped his arms around Jackie's waist, having intended to silence her, either by means of words, or by force; entailing resting a palm over her mouth, which he had been left in no doubt by both Jackie's, was too big for her own good by a massive margin. "How thick are you?! That was an order, not a suggestion!"

The Captain pushed open the door that remained undisturbed centimetres ahead of his current position. "Whatever," he quickly retorted with a conspicuous element of hostility to his tone of voice, while momentarily taken aback by the sight ahead of him. The Doctor remained kneeling as he had been previously, and Rose had joined him on the floor beside her bed. The Doctor was facing the window, yet Jack anticipated that he'd be gazing at it absentmindedly, consumed with thoughts of the blonde which he held in his arms, like she was the crown jewels. Rose had tucked her head neatly into the Doctor's welcoming shoulder, and had her eyes firmly closed; she trusted him with her life.

Jack let a cough escape him, which it was abundantly clear had been emitted only in pretence. "Excuse me; I hate to break up the reunion," he started, as unconvincing as he was. One hand remained firmly clamped over his nose, the other smeared with blood as he attempted to put an end to the continuous flow of blood.

The Doctor gently eased Rose from her spot on his shoulder, and spun his head so that he was facing the Captain. He had been aggravated by the sudden disturbance to say the least.

He stifled back a giggle, before starting. "What the heck happened to you?!"

"Glad to see you noticed while absorbed in Miss Tyler," he told the Doctor, rolling his eyes. Donna Noble happened; not so Noble any longer," his words had been spat, whilst he glanced meaningfully at the Doctor. Rose looked on with an air of confusion about her.

"What's she done?"

The ex time agent found he was beyond the boundaries of control, and embarked on a stream of uncontrollable laughter. "Isn't that bloody obvious?"

"Hang on a minute; would someone mind pausing to explain who this Donna Noble is exactly?" The tense atmosphere of Rose's before calm bedroom was broken as it's owner spoke, feeling as if she had returned to her younger years; consequently the classroom, and had been issued with a mere half of a task sheet.

"His friend; clearly mental, I'm sure you'll agree," came the extremely boastful tones of one Jack Harkness. A smirk directed at Rose accompanied his less than complementary words.

Rose's blissful expression at being reunited with her Doctor instantaneously faltered, feeling as if she'd been at the very least partially replaced in her absence. He didn't love her at all, surely?


	4. A Happy Ending

**A/n: Thanks to everyone who has reviewed during the course of this story, it is much appreciated. I'm going away for a week tomorrow so I thought I'd better post the last part of this before I go. Please keep the reviews coming. **

"Doctor," Rose muttered, almost inaudibly. Her voice was shallow, not dissimilar to that of a small, frightened, traumatized child.

The Doctor's eyes locked with Rose's, in which tears began to well. He stared at her sincerely, mesmerized and besotted with her. "You're everything to me, Rose," came his slight assurance, before he reverted his attention to Jack with a clear reluctance surrounding his action. "And you Jack; quit trying to sound like a persuasive advert, if you'd please."

The Doctor allowed himself several seconds to stare intently at his companion, and he grinned lovingly at her before the realisation hit him that he'd better resolve not only his own situation, but Jack's issue with Donna. Donna's issue with Jack, to be precise.

"What are you doing in here, anyway? Apologising would be a good move, whatever's gone on here."

"Excuse me for fearing my nose may be broken!" Jack expressed quite dramatically.

The Doctor glanced at Rose for a moment, expressing his clearly defined opinion as to Jack's clichéd attitude without need for words. "Don't come to me with the medical stuff; go and ask Martha, I'm busy!" he protested, almost squealing in his desperation to explain to Rose that his friendship with Donna was entirely innocent and would always remain so. He couldn't lose his Rose again; he couldn't, wouldn't.

Martha. Another one. This was history repeating itself alright.

"Martha?" A shaken Rose enquired worriedly, as the Doctor realised what he'd absentmindedly failed to conceal at least until he'd exposed Donna's identity.

"Jack, I think you should just leave us and head to the TARDIS now."

He frowned. "That's just the thing; I asked Martha to take a look at my nose and she refused flat out. It didn't take her very long to come to that conclusion either; I'd say she knew exactly what I was going to ask, if I didn't know any better. Unjustified or what?" the Captain dwelled, longing for sympathy which was undeserved on his part.

"Clearly you really wound up Donna; ganging up against people isn't Martha's style any more than traipsing round retail parks is mine; just go and apologise will you," the Doctor ordered, overlooking the fact that he had handed Jack the perfect window to dispute his words on a plate.

"All I said was ginger people are very attractive; not my fault she decided to get all specific on me!"

"And Martha?"

"She's a woman, what other excuse does she need? Don't know how you put up with those two!"

The Doctor slipped an arm comfortingly around Rose's back, hoping that his gesture would prove at least something of a comfort to her in light of the revelations and truths that she had recently heard and become exposed to, which he was the first to admit, should have sourced from himself and only himself. "Stop trying to argue your way out of everything and get out there and apologise. NOW!"

The Captain, rather surprisingly, actually left swiftly and with a start.

"Martha? Donna? Did I actually mean anything to you for more than five minutes?!"

Great, the wrath of a Tyler. Female as well, that worsened his current circumstances still.

"Rose," he urged, holding both his hands out ahead of him, which she did not take. "I feel apart when you fell into that universe, me, the last time lord. How pathetic that sounds. Anyway, I don't care. All I need is you, and I didn't have you…" The Doctor had not finished what he had been intending to voice as Rose interjected rather loudly.

"So you thought you'd just go and shack up with some other random girls? Well thanks a bunch!" She screeched, clambering to her feet, her legs shaking beneath her.

The Doctor looked to be deeply saddened. He felt tears threaten to fall from his eyes as the one thing that mattered most in the world to him continued to doubt him. "I'm not shacked up with them; Rose…" he began to explain, pulling her gently back down to her knees. This enabled him to gaze straight into her eyes again, and he hoped that if nothing else, his gesture acted as evidence to portray the truthfulness of his words. "I swore I'd never fall for a human, and you know me, I'm not particularly a weak man… you're something pretty special to make me directly contradict that, and they're nothing compared to you. I love you," he told her, as she busied herself contemplating, considering and mulling over his quite lengthy explanation.

"I love you too," she admitted gingerly, the edges of her lips now curling into a slight smile.

The Doctor went to reply, but Rose hadn't finished.

"I was a cow, I'm sorry. I knew about the Time War, and stupidly expected you to be alone just because I couldn't be there. You can't live like that, and I shouldn't have expected that of you, after everything."

"It doesn't matter."

For the first time, Rose now held a genuine interest that was something other than jealously in the Doctor's new friends. "So, how'd you meet them then?"

"Donna; she was with this guy, Lance. Scheming little toad; he was messing around with an old enemy of mine, the Racnoss. Not only that, but she was the Empress. They concocted a plan between them where they dosed Donna with liquid huon particles and the particles then activated while Donna and Lance were supposedly walking down the aisle. Huon energy was eradicated long ago, so it pulled her to the only place in the universe that any remains. The TARDIS."

Rose let out a slight giggle at this admission, and smiled softly. "Bet she was impressed."

"Probably less so than your Mum was when I brought you back after a year, if I'm honest."

"I'd have loved to see that!" grinned Rose.

The Doctor's expression rose into something more humorous for a second, as he considered the events of the Christmas Eve in question. "I wish you had; she found one of your tops draped over the TARDIS rail, and started laying into me claiming I'd abducted her and saying she was going to 'sue the living backside' off of me.

"Like to see that; what the hell for; you don't have any money!"

Rose laughed as did the Doctor, when suddenly a crucial thought dawned on her. "How did you get her to come with you when she wanted to sue you?"

"I didn't," he admitted to a puzzled Rose, who shifted slightly closer to him. "We met up again a couple of months ago."

"What about Martha?"

The Doctor considered the day several months later upon which he had first met Martha, and began. "Medical student; the hospital she worked in was taken to the moon by the Judoon, who wanted to sentence it to execution because they believed that an alien was being concealed there; I couldn't have saved everyone without her, and said she could have a trip as a way of thanks; we just seemed to get pulled into more and more mysteries until she came on board full time."

Allowing his words to replay themselves within her mind, Rose reached a conclusion. "That sounds like fun for you, exhibit A."

"Not much," he grinned, pulling Rose to her feet. "You coming back to the TARDIS then?" he asked her caringly, slightly afraid of hearing her answer. "I'll send them packing if you want; you really are all that I want and all that I need," he assured her, pulling her into a hug. He smiled again she returned it. "Come on," she told him, pulling him along by one of his hands, having released him from the hug. "I've still got a rucksack full of clean clothes in the TARDIS."

--

Martha and Donna could almost have claimed to have done themselves a neck injury as the need to glance to the entrance of the TARDIS became paramount. Amusingly for Rose, Jack stood at the opposite end of the time ship, as if allergic to the two women who stood in the corner, discussing what a parasite their present company was in reality.

The Doctor had an arm wrapped comfortingly, securely and tightly around Rose's shoulder. She said nothing and simply let her eyes scan the inside of the time ship, which she had missed so very much.

"You must be Rose; I've heard so much about you," Donna told her gently, surprisingly quietly and comfortably. She offered a hand in politeness, outstretching it so that it ceased to hang limply.

Rose edged forwards and hugged Donna briefly, before stepping back into the Doctor's grasp and smiling to her. "I hear you gave Jack here a suspected broken nose; nice work!"

Donna began to laugh in infectious tones as the Doctor stepped in to commence the overdue introductions. "Rose, Donna and Martha," he told her, gesturing to each of them in turn. "Martha, that's Rose," he finished, giving her shoulders a slight squeeze, which Rose beamed upon perceiving.

Martha closed in towards Rose, beginning to speak quietly. "It's an honour; the way he talks of you, you'd think you were famous or something."

A silent Rose smiled appreciatively at the medical student standing before her, then turning to her Doctor. She hugged him in silent thanks for his keeping her memory alive, and proceeded to give Martha the same greeting as she had Donna moments before.

The Doctor reluctantly loosened his grip on Rose, and brought his arm out from around her. He strode to the TARDIS's central console with a beaming smile littering his face at finally having his Rose back in his life, before turning back to his companions. "We off, then?"

What came next could only be summarized as a horrendous ego boost to the time lord. "Try getting rid of me," the three women chimed in unison, in the processes of gathering around the console for much needed support during the undoubtedly turbulent flight which lay ahead of them. Jack said nothing, but made no attempt to leave the TARDIS; he had no desire to crawl back to Torchwood, who he anticipated would simply discard him on yet another occasion, as soon as a young, attractive and relatively intelligent female came along.

"Where to then?"

Donna turned to look at Martha, who seemed to subconsciously sense Donna's gaze and turned to meet it. The pair seemed to have engaged in an intense conversation of no words, before piping up, "Lets see Rose's favourite place," the two requested, and the Doctor looked more than happy to oblige.

"Women Wept, is it, Rose?" he asked, although he was sure he'd concluded correctly as he held one hand over the console and the other aside for her to take.

"Oh yes."

The time lord set his machine in motion as Donna and Martha edged closer to Rose, who found she was drifting away from reality in staring at the Doctor. "How did you meet the Doctor?" they asked her, and an amused expression dominated her entire being as she considered her very first encounter with the man she loved. Their question seemed to have emerged from nowhere, but Rose was happy to answer it.

"He blew up my job," she grinned in mild amusement, as Martha and Donna adopted a look of genuine shock. "It wasn't the last time he blew something up in my company, and I don't see it being the last."


End file.
